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Thursday, February 24, 2011

Guttenberg says he lost "track of the sources"

A German website for days sniffs the thesis scandalous German defense minister, Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a rising politician of 39 years of age. The red mark web pages of the thesis in which he has located plagiarism. And red is growing by the day. So far are 268, about 475, the pages said to have been located, either complete and verbatim plagiarism in newspaper articles, academic literature and work of the Documentation Service of the Bundestag (the case of 27 pages) or plagiarism disguised (other 35), translated plagiarism, eg the website of the U.S.

embassy or abusive dating, which only recognizes the foreign ownership of a small part of a great text provided. The defense minister falls short. Guttenberg said first that the accusation of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis was "absurd." On Friday, with the scandal and evidence of plagiarism in newspapers, announced that he renounced the title of doctor "temporarily" - "I stress, temporarily," he said, "but concluded," My thesis is not plagiarism.

" On Monday afternoon, at a rally held in Hesse, Guttenberg admitted having committed "serious errors that do not meet the scientific code," but added, "I made those mistakes do not consciously and I wonder how it could be that partly untraceable sources. " Lose "track of the sources" is understandable in any academic work, but in this case is not persuasive, when over 20% of the work is under suspicion of plagiarism.

The minister's blunder adds to suspicions that others have manipulated or concealed the truth in matters more serious, whether in Afghanistan, killing around a hundred Afghans September 2009, although the case of the navy school ship "Gorch Fock". Its powerful defenders, the Bild newspaper and the Springer group, which played a major role in the public relations campaign to make Guttenberg the "most popular politician" in Germany, and his party, among others, mention a year left .

Guttenberg himself speaks of "witch hunt", but the fact is that the issue is printed and carries his name. With powerful forces that have invested in the rise of Guttenberg, including the U.S., which as seen in Wikileaks leaks are delighted to support a politician even more pro-American and more right that one's Angela Merkel, impression is that his case can be saved.

Unless ... appears "black", the person who wrote the thesis hypothetically in 2006 the then deputy Bavarian busy. No jokes about missing. With his minister touched, but not out, Chancellor Merkel has come for the second time in their rescue. If last week said that the matter should be clarified by the University of Bayreuth, where he presented the thesis Guttenberg, now says, "I asked him to be minister of defense and not an academic assistant, what matters to me is that it does its job nicely ".

The SPD considers that the minister should resign. "He lied and deceived, and something any soldier would be discharged and any student suspended," said the Social Democrat parliamentary group leader, Thomas Oppermann. Network spree in case of plagiarism the minister is leading to a real spree in the network and even on television, as multiple jokes, songs and jokes.

In a comedy of the second television channel Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is introduced as "Doctor No" and his thesis as a compilation of newspaper clippings (Lügen, Betrüger, rauben, plündern, das Recht Beugen ... alles sind bundesdeutsche nun auch inzwischen Tugend). Playing with the surname of the minister, the Berlin "Die Tageszeitung" has christened "zu Googleberg Baron."